Holes (3 page)

“They sent you here for a reason.”

“Oh,” he realized. “I stole a pair of sneakers.”

The other boys thought that was funny. Stanley wasn’t sure why. Maybe because their crimes were a lot worse than stealing shoes.

“From a store, or were they on someone’s feet?” asked Squid.

“Uh, neither,” Stanley answered. “They belonged to Clyde Livingston.”

Nobody believed him.

“Sweet Feet?” said X-Ray. “Yeah, right!”

“No way,” said Squid.

Now, as Stanley lay on his cot, he thought it was kind of funny in a way. Nobody had believed him when he said he was innocent. Now, when he said he stole them, nobody believed him either.

Clyde “Sweet Feet” Livingston was a famous baseball player. He’d led the American League in stolen bases over the last three years. He was also the only player in history to ever hit four triples in one game.

Stanley had a poster of him hanging on the wall of his bedroom. He used to have the poster anyway. He didn’t know where it was now. It had been taken by the police and was used as evidence of his guilt in the courtroom.

Clyde Livingston also came to court. In spite of everything, when Stanley found out that Sweet Feet was going to be there, he was actually excited about the prospect of meeting his hero.

Clyde Livingston testified that they were his sneakers and that he had donated them to help raise money for the homeless shelter. He said he couldn’t imagine what kind of horrible person would steal from homeless children.

That was the worst part for Stanley. His hero thought he was a no-good-dirty-rotten thief.

As Stanley tried to turn over on his cot, he was afraid it was going to collapse under all his weight. He barely fit in it. When he finally managed to roll over on his stomach, the smell was so bad that he had to turn over again and try sleeping on his back. The cot smelled like sour milk.

Though it was night, the air was still very warm. Armpit was snoring two cots away.

Back at school, a bully named Derrick Dunne used to torment Stanley. The teachers never took Stanley’s complaints seriously, because Derrick was so much smaller than Stanley. Some teachers even seemed to find it amusing that a little kid like Derrick could pick on someone as big as Stanley.

On the day Stanley was arrested, Derrick had taken Stanley’s notebook and, after a long game of come-and-get-it, finally dropped it in the toilet in the boys’ restroom. By the time Stanley retrieved it, he had missed his bus and had to walk home.

It was while he was walking home, carrying his wet notebook, with the prospect of having to copy the ruined pages, that the sneakers fell from the sky.

“I was walking home and the sneakers fell from the sky,” he had told the judge. “One hit me on the head.”

It had hurt, too.

They hadn’t exactly fallen from the sky. He had just walked out from under a freeway overpass when the shoe hit him on the head.

Stanley took it as some kind of sign. His father had been trying to figure out a way to recycle old sneakers, and suddenly a pair of sneakers fell on top of him, seemingly out of nowhere, like a gift from God.

Naturally, he had no way of knowing they belonged to Clyde Livingston. In fact, the shoes were anything but sweet. Whoever had worn them had had a bad case of foot odor.

Stanley couldn’t help but think that there was something special about the shoes, that they would somehow provide the key to his father’s invention. It was too much of a coincidence to be a mere accident. Stanley had felt like he was holding destiny’s shoes.

He ran. Thinking back now, he wasn’t sure why he ran. Maybe he was in a hurry to bring the shoes to his father, or maybe he was trying to run away from his miserable and humiliating day at school.

A patrol car pulled alongside him. A policeman asked him why he was running. Then he took the shoes and made a call on his radio. Shortly thereafter, Stanley was arrested.

It turned out the sneakers had been stolen from a display at the homeless shelter. That evening rich people were going to come to the shelter and pay a hundred dollars to eat the food that the poor people ate every day for free. Clyde Livingston, who had once lived at the shelter when he was younger, was going to speak and sign autographs. His shoes
would be auctioned, and it was expected that they would sell for over five thousand dollars. All the money would go to help the homeless.

Because of the baseball schedule, Stanley’s trial was delayed several months. His parents couldn’t afford a lawyer. “You don’t need a lawyer,” his mother had said. “Just tell the truth.”

Stanley told the truth, but perhaps it would have been better if he had lied a little. He could have said he found the shoes in the street. No one believed they fell from the sky.

It wasn’t destiny, he realized. It was his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather!

The judge called Stanley’s crime despicable. “The shoes were valued at over five thousand dollars. It was money that would provide food and shelter for the homeless. And you stole that from them, just so you could have a souvenir.”

The judge said that there was an opening at Camp Green Lake, and he suggested that the discipline of the camp might improve Stanley’s character. It was either that or jail. Stanley’s parents asked if they could have some time to find out more about Camp Green Lake, but the judge advised them to make a quick decision. “Vacancies don’t last long at Camp Green Lake.”

The shovel felt heavy in Stanley’s soft, fleshy hands. He tried to jam it into the earth, but the blade banged against the ground and bounced off without making a dent. The vibrations ran up the shaft of the shovel and into Stanley’s wrists, making his bones rattle.

It was still dark. The only light came from the moon and the stars, more stars than Stanley had ever seen before. It seemed he had only just gotten to sleep when Mr. Pendanski came in and woke everyone up.

Using all his might, he brought the shovel back down onto the dry lake bed. The force stung his hands but made no impression on the earth. He wondered if he had a defective shovel. He glanced at Zero, about fifteen feet away, who scooped out a shovelful of dirt and dumped it on a pile that was already almost a foot tall.

For breakfast they’d been served some kind of lukewarm
cereal. The best part was the orange juice. They each got a pint carton. The cereal actually didn’t taste too bad, but it had smelled just like his cot.

Then they filled their canteens, got their shovels, and were marched out across the lake. Each group was assigned a different area.

The shovels were kept in a shed near the showers. They all looked the same to Stanley, although X-Ray had his own special shovel, which no one else was allowed to use. X-Ray claimed it was shorter than the others, but if it was, it was only by a fraction of an inch.

The shovels were five feet long, from the tip of the steel blade to the end of the wooden shaft. Stanley’s hole would have to be as deep as his shovel, and he’d have to be able to lay the shovel flat across the bottom in any direction. That was why X-Ray wanted the shortest shovel.

The lake was so full of holes and mounds that it reminded Stanley of pictures he’d seen of the moon. “If you find anything interesting or unusual,” Mr. Pendanski had told him, “you should report it either to me or Mr. Sir when we come around with the water truck. If the Warden likes what you found, you’ll get the rest of the day off.”

“What are we supposed to be looking for?” Stanley asked him.

“You’re not looking for anything. You’re digging to build character. It’s just if you find anything, the Warden would like to know about it.”

He glanced helplessly at his shovel. It wasn’t defective.
He
was defective.

He noticed a thin crack in the ground. He placed the point of his shovel on top of it, then jumped on the back of the blade with both feet.

The shovel sank a few inches into the packed earth.

He smiled. For once in his life it paid to be overweight.

He leaned on the shaft and pried up his first shovelful of dirt, then dumped it off to the side.

Only ten million more to go
, he thought, then placed the shovel back in the crack and jumped on it again.

He unearthed several shovelfuls of dirt in this manner, before it occurred to him that he was dumping his dirt within the perimeter of his hole. He laid his shovel flat on the ground and marked where the edges of his hole would be. Five feet was awfully wide.

He moved the dirt he’d already dug up out past his mark. He took a drink from his canteen. Five feet would be awfully deep, too.

The digging got easier after a while. The ground was hardest at the surface, where the sun had baked a crust about eight inches deep. Beneath that, the earth was looser. But by the time Stanley broke past the crust, a blister had formed in the middle of his right thumb, and it hurt to hold the shovel.

Stanley’s great-great-grandfather was named Elya Yelnats. He was born in Latvia. When he was fifteen years old he fell in love with Myra Menke.

[He didn’t know he was Stanley’s great-great-grandfather.]

Myra Menke was fourteen. She would turn fifteen in two months, at which time her father had decided she should be married.

Elya went to her father to ask for her hand, but so did Igor Barkov, the pig farmer. Igor was fifty-seven years old. He had a red nose and fat puffy cheeks.

“I will trade you my fattest pig for your daughter,” Igor offered.

“And what have you got?” Myra’s father asked Elya.

“A heart full of love,” said Elya.

“I’d rather have a fat pig,” said Myra’s father.

Desperate, Elya went to see Madame Zeroni, an old Egyptian woman who lived on the edge of town. He had become friends with her, though she was quite a bit older than him. She was even older than Igor Barkov.

The other boys of his village liked to mud wrestle. Elya preferred visiting Madame Zeroni and listening to her many stories.

Madame Zeroni had dark skin and a very wide mouth. When she looked at you, her eyes seemed to expand, and you felt like she was looking right through you.

“Elya, what’s wrong?” she asked, before he even told her he was upset. She was sitting in a homemade wheelchair. She had no left foot. Her leg stopped at her ankle.

“I’m in love with Myra Menke,” Elya confessed. “But Igor Barkov has offered to trade his fattest pig for her. I can’t compete with that.”

“Good,” said Madame Zeroni. “You’re too young to get married. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.”

“But I love Myra.”

“Myra’s head is as empty as a flowerpot.”

“But she’s beautiful.”

“So is a flowerpot. Can she push a plow? Can she milk a
goat? No, she is too delicate. Can she have an intelligent conversation? No, she is silly and foolish. Will she take care of you when you are sick? No, she is spoiled and will only want you to take care of her. So, she is beautiful. So what? Ptuui!”

Madame Zeroni spat on the dirt.

She told Elya that he should go to America. “Like my son. That’s where your future lies. Not with Myra Menke.”

But Elya would hear none of that. He was fifteen, and all he could see was Myra’s shallow beauty.

Madame Zeroni hated to see Elya so forlorn. Against her better judgment, she agreed to help him.

“It just so happens, my sow gave birth to a litter of piglets yesterday,” she said. “There is one little runt whom she won’t suckle. You may have him. He would die anyway.”

Madame Zeroni led Elya around the back of her house where she kept her pigs.

Elya took the tiny piglet, but he didn’t see what good it would do him. It wasn’t much bigger than a rat.

“He’ll grow,” Madame Zeroni assured him. “Do you see that mountain on the edge of the forest?”

“Yes,” said Elya.

“On the top of the mountain there is a stream where the water runs uphill. You must carry the piglet every day to the top of the mountain and let it drink from the stream. As it drinks, you are to sing to him.”

She taught Elya a special song to sing to the pig.

“On the day of Myra’s fifteenth birthday, you should carry the pig up the mountain for the last time. Then take it directly
to Myra’s father. It will be fatter than any of Igor’s pigs.”

“If it is that big and fat,” asked Elya, “how will I be able to carry it up the mountain?”

“The piglet is not too heavy for you now, is it?” asked Madame Zeroni.

“Of course not,” said Elya.

“Do you think it will be too heavy for you tomorrow?”

“No.”

“Every day you will carry the pig up the mountain. It will get a little bigger, but you will get a little stronger. After you give the pig to Myra’s father, I want you to do one more thing for me.”

“Anything,” said Elya.

“I want you to carry me up the mountain. I want to drink from the stream, and I want you to sing the song to me.”

Elya promised he would.

Madame Zeroni warned that if he failed to do this, he and his descendants would be doomed for all of eternity.

At the time, Elya thought nothing of the curse. He was just a fifteen-year-old kid, and “eternity” didn’t seem much longer than a week from Tuesday. Besides, he liked Madame Zeroni and would be glad to carry her up the mountain. He would have done it right then and there, but he wasn’t yet strong enough.

Stanley was still digging. His hole was about three feet deep, but only in the center. It sloped upward to the edges. The sun had only just come up over the horizon, but he already could feel its hot rays against his face.

As he reached down to pick up his canteen, he felt a sudden rush of dizziness and put his hands on his knees to steady himself. For a moment he was afraid he would throw up, but the moment passed. He drank the last drop of water from his canteen. He had blisters on every one of his fingers, and one in the center of each palm.

Everyone else’s hole was a lot deeper than his. He couldn’t actually see their holes but could tell by the size of their dirt piles.

He saw a cloud of dust moving across the wasteland and noticed that the other boys had stopped digging and were watching it, too. The dirt cloud moved closer, and he could see that it trailed behind a red pickup truck.